


Sleeping Through Our Memories

by orphan_account



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-22
Updated: 2006-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-15 14:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14791964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: J/D triple-ish drabble.  (When do things become 'ficlets'?)  Angst.





	Sleeping Through Our Memories

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Disclaimer:** All characters belong people that aren’t me. I am not making a profit from this. Title and italicized lines belong to Fall Out Boy, because they have a better way with words than I do.

\-----

There’s an ache inside of him that won’t go away. He uses her, and she knows it, and he knows that, too, but he can’t seem to care, because she doesn’t. It hurts when he holds her close and it hurts when he holds her at a distance, but he can’t care, because the only way he knows how to take away the ache is with the pain.

The ache is slowly ripping him apart at the seams, pulling him in two directions, and he doesn’t know what road to take. It’s not about love; it never has been; it’s only need and they both accept that. _I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive; now I only waste it dreaming of you._ But it’s not about that.

When he kisses her, the ache goes away, just for a little while, just enough to remind him that there’s something beneath it. But he can’t feel that, not yet. Maybe not ever. He just knows the ache, and then the pain. There was no pleasure in it, but just enough of pain. Just enough for him to remember what it was like to feel something real.

And it hurt, and it was good. Or not good, but enough. It hurt, every time she left him an unlocked door, and he left her a cold, half-empty bed and cheeks stained with tears in her sleep, every time he held her, knowing that she knew he didn’t mean it, every time he knew he did that, every time he wished he wasn’t that man, tried to convince himself that he hadn’t been that man before, every time he knew it didn’t matter to her, because he was that man now.

And every time she walked into his office with a sad, bruised, horribly accepting look in her eyes, it broke his heart a little more.


End file.
